


and it was in the stars that i found you (while you found me deep in the sea)

by wartransmission



Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Poetry, poetry collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-08 18:15:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8855866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wartransmission/pseuds/wartransmission
Summary: If there were words to encompass the whole of you,I would always run out, always have too littleto describe the wondrous you.
A collection of poems for Steve, Tony, and the ties that bind them.





	1. how else would you know what you have until you have lost it?

**Author's Note:**

> This one is more 616 than anything else, considering the "home" reference. Also- would it be preferred if I leave notes on the context, or would y'all prefer I keep it as it is?

How else would anyone know what it’s like to feel so numb, so empty,  
without first knowing what it’s like to feel- to _be_ \- so full? 

You were a disruption to my cycle of quiet loneliness;  
starlight, moonshine, home to my weary heart,  
and I have never known what emptiness was like  
until the moment you left and took my heart with you.


	2. loving you hurts, but i wouldn’t have you any other way

Falling in love with you was never the plan.

No one could have planned this-  
this avalanche of emotion, my heart so irreparably yours  
and my soul ineffably tied to you  
that I can’t even find it in me to see anyone else  
in your place.

My god, I love you.

I adore every fucking inch of you,  
every scar and every burn on olive skin  
and I would lay my heart out  
right here, right now,  
if it meant you could be happy.

You break my heart, do you know that?

Whenever you wear that smile, that exact one  
that tells me how broken and unworthy you feel inside,  
it kills me.

It kills me, puts my lungs through the shredder  
every time I hear you say that “I’m fine”  
when all you really mean is  
“I’m trying. God, I’m trying.”

Loving you hurts, Tony.  
Loving you is like putting myself in the sun’s orbit,  
and hoping to god I won’t burn when I get too close to you.

Loving you was never the plan, but hell,  
I would choose to get hurt trying to save you,  
would choose to put my life on the line for you,  
than never have you in my life.


	3. born into a life that requires masks, it’s no wonder you’d make one that reaches down into your soul

Building layers upon layers of gold-titanium alloy over scarred skin,  
one would think that the armor is an enhanced shield against everything else  
but people forget;  
sometimes you need to build your own cage  
to keep yourself from spilling out into  
blood and bones, frail heart and lungs.


	4. your smiles are infectious and i fear i am ill with love

Your smiles are a danger to my health, infectious and hot inside the soft viscera of my being  
and I’ve never had an immune system so weak  
as when you smiled at bright new ideas weaving together in your head  
and I saw all of that child-like wonder in your breathtaking grin.  
  
(In all honesty, I’ve never quite wanted to be near anything so contagious-  
having been born into a body filled to the brim with physical weakness-  
until the moment I first saw that spark of genius  
bringing out the galaxies residing in your blue eyes.)


	5. you broke my heart, but that’s okay (i can build another one in its place)

they clipped your wings in your youth,  
painted a pure white canvas with   
the dark red hues of blood and expectation  
and yet they wonder, after all those years of being held down  
just why it is you would make your home in   
the golden and gleaming red metals  
of self-made wings.

  
you don’t think it takes much of a genius to realize that  
leaving your heart entwined in intricate electric circuits at age four  
would inevitably lead you into the waiting embrace of cold metal  
for lack of knowing anything warmer to encase your heart in.


	6. falling in love with you is like skydiving into a tornado and hoping for the best (it’s scary, sure, but the thrill is goddamn worth it)

No human body was ever meant to hold as much as you do;   
it’s evident in all the cracks in your armor,  
the broken smiles you don as masks and  
the gaping hole in your chest filled with light.

You are- and this is putting it mildly-  
a disaster of epic proportions, a compact body  
housing hurricanes and tornadoes, wildfire and lightning  
just waiting to consume whomever is closest in one fell swoop.

Loving you is willingly putting myself on an active railroad,  
waiting in apprehension for when the train will come  
and hoping it will run the other way,  
just so I can keep my heart safe for another day.

Loving you scares me,  
but god, I have never felt as full as I have  
when you told me that you loved who I was, who I am:  
that frail and skinny Brooklyn boy holding justice to his heart in an unspoken oath  
housed inside a body finally made to keep up with a too-large heart  
held between two heaving lungs.


	7. they called you the Merchant of Death; you called yourself hell-bound

your every action is haunted by ghosts  
fraught with horrors better buried in darkness and dirt  
and every demon welcomed in your body  
was encased in bottles you kissed with bloodied lips.

you could have been a monster;  
could have chosen a life where hell held your finest throne  
and everyone else would suffer in your stead.  
yet you pulled yourself down,  
  
made your alloy wings- a paradox of flight and restraint-  
  
as you swore to the earth your soul, your heart, and your mind  
and made peace with the devil in your chest  
to breathe in life anew.  
  
you could have been different, could have chosen a life  
where there was no life at all,  
but you chose purgatory, bound your soul to a heart  
that would only ever half-heal.  
  
you chose life,  
and you suffered for it.  
  
(but, in truth,  
what is a life accomplished  
if not a life lined with sacrifice?)


	8. but asking for a life were I could be good for once would be too much, wouldn’t it?

In another world, another life,  
I’d like to believe that you were- could be- mine.

I want to believe that whatever it was I did wrong in this one,  
it was something I didn’t do in another universe,  
and this chasm between us wouldn’t exist  
as palpable as the gaping hole in my chest.

In another world, perhaps,  
I would love you just the same,  
but you would love me back.

In another world,  
maybe I would have met the hero I grew to love  
instead of the man who tore into me with all the spite  
of a man lost in time, left behind by everyone he knew and loved.

In another world,  
I might have been yours  
and, while it’s a stretch,  
maybe I would’ve been happy.

Maybe I wouldn’t feel so damn tired,  
wrung out and weighed down by  
distrust and the constant expectation  
that I will fuck everything up-

as I always have,  
and I always will, it seems.

Maybe, in another life,  
I would’ve done something right.


	9. you mask the helplessness in your bones with half-lies of selfish wanting (but is it a lie when all you want is to hold love close, even when it does not want you back?)

It’s not so much a subconscious wish for self-destruction that leads to sleepless nights  
as it is a fear of unknown galaxies, of death and blood and guilt behind shut eyelids  
every time you so much as lie in the cold comfort of your bed.

It is not a death wish. It is not asking for Thanatos’ hand on your neck  
for every moment you take someone else’s place in His path  
as it is a desperate wish to not lose someone  
(again, please god, not again.)

You will not call it love, you will not call it affection. You will not name it with anything as soft  
as the heart that continues to beat in your scarred chest.

(You have been taught that to be soft is weakness, that to love is to open your soul  
to the wretched agony that always accompanies loss and abandonment.)

You call it punishment, call it greed and selfishness and recompense for all your sins,  
because that is all it is. You are selfish;  
these lives that you save, these people you hold close  
are all stepping stones to forgiveness that you know you will never truly receive.

(It has gotten so much easier to lie, when everyone else believes the lies you give.)

You are selfish, and the interminable purgatory of a continued existence on earth  
would be the only punishment you would refuse with iron will  
for fear of a life where you would be (once again)  
left behind by everyone you hold dear.


	10. you would have them believe that your soul houses gods, when all that you are is a broken man with a hollowed heart

Forged from hellfire and war-bought glory  
you carry iron in your heart, iron in your soul  
(iron forced into your spine by cruel hands)  
with a weight that even Atlas could not bear.

You find your escape in nightmares;  
worlds and galaxies stretching beyond your understanding  
with purgatory binding your soul to a land that will never forget  
your father’s name.

You try anyway.

You build iron walls again and again, relentless and in sync  
with your restless, still-beating heart, aching for a love that is not rooted in  
a name you were forced to take.

You learn heartache by rote, you count the times your heart breaks  
as you would the cups of coffee you drink for every night  
you cannot swallow the truth of your insignificance  
in a vast universe that only knows you as a speck of dust  
in its glorious infinitude.

You try and you are torn down;  
Icarus burnt by the sun and drowned by the ocean’s embrace  
while reaching for love held in the unattainable stars  
and glory illusive in distant skies.

You try and they see:  
bloodshed, stolen lives and your hands on the trigger,  
Achilles’ heel magnified in the core of your chest  
and Ares portrayed in your protective spirit.

You try and they name you Thanatos, Merchant of Death,  
when in truth you were Janus;  
the beginning and the end, two faces turned   
to the past that fractured a frail heart  
and the future that would be made by your hands.


	11. at the heart of this golden reparation is a body that has never really understood how to contain love

you first learn to repair a broken heart at age seven, spilling iron over  
holes puncturing weak lungs and a curving spine;  
you were young still, and never taught  
that the clumsy concealment of cracks with familiar elements  
does not a reparation make.

years turn into decades, your iron shields start to rust  
up until you learn of better alloys, gold and titanium  
forming a suit of armor holding up a body that has long since  
given up living a life for its own worth.

then you find what you think is love-  
a heart possessive, desperate for warmth after a lifetime of quiet loneliness  
and broken ribs that will finally learn the value of silver-laced lacquer  
slipping between its jagged, twisted rifts.

it takes solid vibranium digging into your iron-coated core before you learn:  
you are most familiar with love that tears into silver-linked edges  
breaking you apart into pieces of fine china  
than love that fills the gaps in your chest with gold-dusted varnish,  
as you had always dreamed it would.

[it will take a while, you think,  
(heaven and hell torn asunder, your earth thrown into chaos)  
before you can learn the truth:  
it takes the second breaking of a heart  
for love to better fill its gaps anew.]


	12. would it make this man a fool, to love you regardless?

golden child, soldier boy,  
does your heart remember what it meant  
to be weak, body made of glass and thunder,  
with a soul made of iron?  
  
(do you remember what it was  
when you were only a man?)  
  
freedom’s lover, concord’s speaker,  
do you remember what it meant  
when these hands gave you a home  
and you called me your friend?  
  
do you know  
how much this heart  
has loved you?  
  
this wounded heart knew you as a savior  
for all that its first killer hailed you his champion;  
it’s a wonder that i never saw  
your own hands breaking mine.


	13. they say broken things find solace in damaged hearts

A person is not a home  
to bury oneself in, creating shelter  
out of flesh and bone  
in payment of a heart that is not your own. 

A person is not a home  
yet you still find your way to me  
crawling into the spaces of my struggling lungs  
to find salvation in my broken heart.


End file.
